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alphadogg writes "Japanese police are looking for an individual who can code in C#, uses a 'Syberian Post Office' to make anonymous posts online, and knows how to surf the web without leaving any digital tracks — and they're willing to pay. It is the first time that Japan's National Police Agency has offered a monetary reward for a wanted hacker, or put so much technical detail into one of its wanted postings. The NPA will pay up to $36,000, the maximum allowed under its reward system. The case is an embarrassing one for the police, in which earlier this year 4 individuals were wrongly arrested after their PCs were hacked and used to post messages on public bulletin boards. The messages included warnings of plans for mass killings at an elementary school posted to a city website."

Without finding the original article, I've looked on a couple of the JP dailies and I can't find it yet. Only the english version on english sites, I'm going to hazard a guess that it's something *seriously* lost in translation--I'm guessing translated by google, fair warning that google doesn't translate Japanese slang into anything approaching english, so you get weird words like that. And what they're referring to is boards like 2ch there's more than 2ch and futaba though. Which are used by a lot of k

2ch sometimes bans IPs from posting. But not all boards on 2ch will share this ban. The "siberian super flash news" () board is one of these that doesn't take into account bans on the system, and so people post on this board and ask others to spread what they posted onto wherever they actually want it to be.

Errr, get out that old dusty book that you used at school called an "Atlas". If you look at Japan you will see that there is a large chunk of land next to it called Russia. The part of Russia that is nearest to Japan is called Siberia. In Siberia they have places that are used for communication including sending letters (they sell stamps) etc. as well as using the internet.... If you want to use the internet anonymously you can use this service like you would a library in the US.

Ok. Myself, I was quite aware of where Siberia is and what a Post Office is. Here in the US we don't have internet terminals, or at least not ones for the public/customers and I for one do not spend my vacations visiting all the post offices of the many areas of the world. Also, notice the 'y' instead of an 'i' in the summary? I certainly would have guessed this was slang for something before actually thinking they are talking about a post office in Siberia.

Nah, the Laughing Man was somewhat ethical. This sounds like one of his impersonators, which points to the Japanese government itself. So why would they post a reward for themselves? Wouldn't they want to make it as low profile as possible? Perhaps there is a rogue police agency in play here.

I think hackers have more to fear from the mafia underground than legal authorities. If you get caught by the federalies, they'll put you in prison for a few years, and you can rethink your criminal ways. However... if you start looking for profit with your data breeches, and you start looking into money mule networks then the mafia and seedy underground isn't very far away. What if that breech at the door isn't the feds, but some mafiaa goons who tell you to keep doing what you're doing, but they'll protect you for the cool price of all your profits. People who look to get into a life of crime may find it.

It is only a matter of time before a crime syndicate forms over all these careless hackers. They could recruit spammers, and hackers could be used to find more hackers...

I think hackers have more to fear from the mafia underground than legal authorities.

LOL, Does your made for Hollywood vision of script kiddies getting swept up in a sea of crime star a young Angelina Jolie flying through 3D cyberspace with her trusty RISC and spray-painted Kom-Pu-Tah? If you ask me, that's a market niche worth mining.

Oi, Tony, get a load of this prick 'ere pissin' on our cyber-turf? What do you say we pay 'em a lil' visit and make 'em an offer they can't refuse?

Look, Guido, I know you flunked school -- and fuck teachers -- but this little pissant isn't worth a fuckkin' trip to Japan, you simple non-geographically inclined muther fukker. Besides, we got a deal with the Yakuza, we don't slice their sushi, and they don't bust our meatballs. Capiche?

I think hackers have more to fear from the mafia underground than legal authorities.

LOL, Does your made for Hollywood vision of script kiddies getting swept up in a sea of crime star a young Angelina Jolie flying through 3D cyberspace with her trusty RISC and spray-painted Kom-Pu-Tah? If you ask me, that's a market niche worth mining.

I'm more worried about how low the qualifications for "Hacker" have sunk over the last few years.

Borrowed a friend's laptop, they're still logged into Facebook, I change a few things -> LOL I@M71337H@x0r

Yes, the quality has dropped. Through the floor. People getting caught for this stuff these days are doing the technological equivalent of jay-walking. And the people spooked by them are the types that they still scared of telling stories around a camp-fire.

I am not worried so much about current authorities. I am worried about the precedent they set and the dangers of what they are building. We have already seen massive exploitation of data that has been the result of the screwups of central authorities.

it was not long ago that drivers licence numbers were regularly SSNs, and the public record thus included your SSN, Address, Name, and DOB. You can purchase CDs, from the states, with the entire database of ALL drivers licenc

What if that breech at the door isn't the feds, but some mafiaa goons who tell you to keep doing what you're doing, but they'll protect you for the cool price of all your profits.

In order for that scenario to happen the Mafia have to be better Internet sleuths than the Feds, and the hacker, otherwise they will never know who the hacker is. If the Mafia are not technically adept to hacking they won't be able to track you down, unless you are stupid enough to not be worth their time. If the Mafia are technically adept enough to track you down then they don't need you, your just in the way. Catch 22.

Its the hacker that seeks out the Mafia that will get told to keep doing it. If you

Classic framing/griefing. Obviously they should add "and they probably know all 4 of those people" to the evidence list. I guess they overlooked that little tidbit. Otherwise good luck tracking down proxies and Tor exit nodes cuz that info is as worthless as it gets when it comes to finding this person.

Classic framing/griefing. Obviously they should add "and they probably know all 4 of those people" to the evidence list. I guess they overlooked that little tidbit. Otherwise good luck tracking down proxies and Tor exit nodes cuz that info is as worthless as it gets when it comes to finding this person.

Surely not many people use a "Syberian" post office, or even know where to find one.

Actually the attacks seem to be random rather than targeted. The suspicion is that people followed malicious links posted on 2ch or downloaded malware from P2P apps.

We may have seen the perfect cybercrime.

It's good that the police can at least understand that these people were framed. In the UK the police couldn't even figure out that credit cards used to buy child porn were stolen and it took people years to clear their names, if they didn't commit suicide first.

If you can read Japanese the definition is in this page [impress.co.jp].
Basically there is an anonymous board in Japan known as 2ch, which is the "father" of 2chan.net and "grandfather" of 4chan and all other *chan websites. Sometimes your IP is blocked for some reason and you can't post. So you used this Siberian Post Office as some sort of proxy and it posts for you.

I love their definition of the 'hacker'.It could be basically any tech-savvy young person with these qualifiers:

Can code in C#: Easiest language ever. With the MS version it basically codes for you, and you just make sure it doesn't do anything stupid.Uses a Syberian Post Office: No idea what this is, but assuming some software, I'm sure it's downloadable with some searching.Knows how to surf without leaving digital tracks: Clearly, they never heard of TOR and secure anonymous browsers. Easy as pie.

That's what I'm reading. Someone coded up a redirector in C#. I'm...I'm not even sure that's a crime here. I mean, it's using someone's resources without their knowledge, but either the English-translation is missing some key info, or Japan has a zero-tolerance policy for, what might considered in other parts of the world, an almost minor transgression.

So, this person setup a redirector, and the Japanese are offering their highest reward for them. Yeah, we're missing something. I mean, the reward is only $3

Close. After the Russian Revolution, when Stalin began stuffing Siberia with political dissidants, he realized how late the mail was arriving from those territories, making compliance to Party orders lag. Stalin decreed that the mail will be on time, and a clever Siberian post master adjusted the time stamp at his remote post. The mail from Siberia began to arrive in Moscow in record time, so it seemed. Subsequently, there was a Korean manufacturer that produced a router that, in an effort to speed up packe

So the hacker's modus operandi is to frame other people? Why do I think that we'll see the hacker frame somebody and then turn that person in for the reward. The reward that the hacker himself created. Twisted. But then so is Orange Juice.